3 STL-QPSR AN ONTOGENETC STUDY OF NFANT SPEECH PERCEPTON F. Lacerda*, G. Aurelius**,. Lattdberg*, artd L. Roug-Hellichius* "nstitute of Linguistics, Stock/iolr?~ University **St. Goran's Childreri s Hospital, Serafetts vdrdcerztral GENERAL GOALS This paper presents the main lines of a project that will assess the development of speech perception and production during the first two years of life f. The project will primarily focus on the evolution the infant's speech perception during the language acquisition process. The studies will cornplernent the investigations of infant speech production that were made in previous projects carried out by the nstitute of Linguistics of the University of Stockliolrll (Roug, Landberg, & Lundberg, 1989). The evolution of the infant's perceptual space for speech will be investigated from two perspectives. One perspective concems the infant's basic auditory abilities: what kind of speech sounds does the infant discriminate and how the infant's ability to discriminate along different acoustic dimensions changes in the course of language acquisition. The other concems the infant's capacity to establish equivalence classes for speech sounds, i.e., the ability to ignore co~mnunicative irrelevant acoustic differences among sounds in order to become a linguistically competent listener. One of the goals of this project is to gather both perceptual and productional data to provide an empirical basis for the discussion of theories that account for invariance in speech perception by reference to speech articulation gestures. Although the gross aspects of the initial phase of language acquisition seem to be similar across infants, infants clearly have idiosyncrasies regarding the infidnt's preferences for places of articulation and, later, words. The project will attempt following the indivitlual development strategies of both speech perception and speech production as this may uncover the relationship between perception and production of speech, in particular, the relative timing of their development. Another goal of the project is to provide empirical evidence for the discussion of the two traditionally competing hypothesis: (a) The infant's speech capabilities are the result of a phylogenetic specialization for speech vs (b) the infant's speech development is accounted for by functional specialization of general auditory mecha~isms. Finally, the project's perceptual experiments will be coordinated with those of studies that are being carried out in Universities abroad, as to provide comparable cross language data on infant speech perception development. METHODS The methodology for this project was chosen to enable the parallel follow up of the infant's perceptual and productional develoytnetlt. The production data will be registered inunediately before 01. after the perception experiments, whenever possible. Both video and audio recordings will ke ~nade under the same standard situations in which data was collectetl for the project "Frotn babbling to language " (FrAn joller till spr& ) and that are described in Roug & al. (1989). The perception experiments will be conducted using behavioral techniques. The infant is initially exposed to a reference stirnulus (or a reference set of stimuli). Once a stable behavior has been attained after this exposure period, the target stimuli are pre- 7 For a detailed version of the project see Lacerda, Aurelius, Landberg and Roug-Hellichius (1989).

4 FONETK -89 sented. The infant's response to the new stlnuli is inferred from changes in the infant's behavior. PRODUCTON DATA Video and audio recordings for the production data are planned to be done in connection with the perception experiments $. The recorcluig sessions will be 15 minutes long, just before and after the perception experiment. The perception test itself will also be video recorded for posterior analysis. There will be three standard recordhig situations. The mother will be encouraged to stimulate the infant's speech production during the recordings. nfants that do not sit without help For newborns and small infants that are not yet able to sit by themselves, the recordings 1 will be made under two standard situations. Ln one, the infant will be laying on a table being changed by the mother. n the other, the infant will sit on the mother's knees, face to face with the mother. nfants that can sit by themselves When the infant can sit without help, a new recording situation will be created in which the infant will be given a set of standard toys to play with. Methodological problems The infant's speech production material will be separately transcribed by at least two phonetically trained transcribers. Their phonetic transcriptions will be then be described in terms of phonetic parameters and only the transcriptiolls matching i11 at least 80% of those parameters will be considered for future analysis. Perception experiments The perception experiments will be carried out with two different behavioral techniques depending on the infants age. nfants below about 6 months of age For infants in this age group the experiments will be conducted with the high amplitude sucking technique (HAS). First the high amplitude criterion is defined for the infant to be tested. This is done by letting the infant suck a blind nipple for a short while. The criterion for high anplitude sucking is then defined so that a certain percentage of the infant's spontaneous suckings will be above the criterion. After this the satiation phase starts. A stimulus (or set of sthnuli) is presented when the infant's sucking amplitude is high. A lllnitation of the maxirnuin frequency of stimulus repetition is included. Except for this lhnitation, the stitnulus 131-eserit;~tiori is tolltrolled by the infant. After a while the infant gets tired of listening to the sane stimulus atitl tiecreases the frequency of the high amplitude sucks. At that point a new stimulus is pr-esentetl. f the infant can discriminate this from the preceding one the sucking frequency rnay increase again. $ The schedule of these recordings may have to be readjusted if it turns out to be too straining for the young infants.

5 STL-QPSR nfants above about 6 months of age nfants that are more than 6 months old will be tested using a visual reinforcement head turn (HT) technique. The infant hears first a reference stimulus (or set of stimuli) that is periodically repeated. After an initial period of culiosity, the infant ignores the presence of the stimulus and becomes instead interested in a silent toy that is held in fiont of the baby. At this stage the reference stimulus is substituted by a new stimulus and a toy that draws the infant's attention is presented laterally at the same time. The infant looks in the direction of the new toy. After a while the toy is removed, the presentation of the original reference stimulus continues and the infant becomes again interested in the toy that is in front of him. After some repetitions of this procedure, the infant expects to see the second toy whenever the reference stimulus is substituted by another sound. The infant anticipates the appearance of the second toy and looks toward the place where the toy can be seen when he detects the type of changes in the stimuli that were associated with the appearance of toy. f the infant's head turn occurs after a correct detection, the toy is displayed and therefore the infant's behavior reinforced. f the infant makes an incorrect head turn, the toy is not shown. The measurement of the head turns and their relation to the presented stimuli indicates the type of discriminations or classifications that the infant is able to make. Methodological problems There are a number of difficulties with these experiments. First the amount of data that can be obtained by session is rather limited. Second the experiments demand that the infant is willing to cooperate, does not fall asleep, starts crying or gets distracted during the experiment. Third the interpretation of the infant's behavioral responses demands special control of possible experimenter's bias. Fourth the number of experimental sessions per infant (roughly 30 in two years) demands a high motivation from the parents. Experiment schedule The time interval between the experiments will be adjusted to the infant's developmental stage. Newborns will be studied every other week, starting at their first week of life, until they reach the reduplicated consonant babbling stage. After that milestone the infants will be tested once a month. STMUL The stimuli for the experiments will consist of synthetic V, CV, VC and CVCV stimuli. These stimuli will be used to study how the discrimination and the establishment of equivalence classes evolve during the first two years of life. The CVCV stimuli will be used to investigate the infant's representation of the Swedish word accents: Accent (acute) and accent 1 (grave). The stimuli that will be used in the perceptiorl tests with the itlfants will w first calibrated in labelling tests run with adult native speakers of Swetlish. SUBJECTS The subjects will be full tent1 infants born, after a normal gestational period, at the Karolinska Hospital, in Stockhohn. The future parents w-ill be contacted by the doctor or nurse in charge of the routine check ups during pregnancy.

icommuni cate SPEECH & COMMUNICATION THERAPY Milestones of speech, language and communication development 0-12 Months The rate of children's speech and language development can vary, depending on the child.

L2 EXPERIENCE MODULATES LEARNERS USE OF CUES IN THE PERCEPTION OF L3 TONES Zhen Qin, Allard Jongman Department of Linguistics, University of Kansas, United States qinzhenquentin2@ku.edu, ajongman@ku.edu

Information for parents Paediatric Hearing Assessment Hearing assessment of infants is limited by their ability to respond to sounds. This is determined by both the development of the hearing system and

>> Welcome to another music and the brain podcast. I'm Steve Mentcher. And I'm talking today with Jane Stanley, a professor at the Florida State University where she has a joint appointment in the Colleges

0 3 Months Your baby was born relationship ready and in her first three months of life is actively trying to make sense of her world. Before she can even speak, your baby is communicating with her facial

62 Hearing Impaired MI-SG-FLD062-02 TABLE OF CONTENTS PART 1: General Information About the MTTC Program and Test Preparation OVERVIEW OF THE TESTING PROGRAM... 1-1 Contact Information Test Development

Bachelors of Science Program in Communication Disorders and Sciences: Mission: The SIUC CDS program is committed to multiple complimentary missions. We provide support for, and align with, the university,

It is essential that all Head Start and Early Head Start (EHS) programs have systems, policies, and procedures in place to meet the needs of children and families who speak languages other than English.

Four Areas of Development: Infancy to Toddler Copyright Copyright Texas Education Agency, 2012. These Materials are copyrighted and trademarked as the property of the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and may

NOTE: Hosts may wish to introduce this topic as a program about health care for your children from birth through teenage years and so they are ready for school and work. 1. This show is about screening

B2 There is much growth and change that must occur in your baby s body. For babies born full-term (37-40 weeks), this growth and change occurred within the warm, dark, watery womb. For the premature baby,

How Children Acquire Language: A New Answer by Dr. Laura Ann Petitto How do babies acquire language? What do babies know when they start to speak? Prevailing views about the biological foundations of language

Unilateral (Hearing Loss in One Ear) Hearing Loss Guidance Indiana s Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Program Before universal newborn hearing screening, most children with unilateral hearing loss

Classical vs. Operant Conditioning Operant conditioning (R S RF ) A voluntary response (R) is followed by a reinforcing stimulus (S RF ) The voluntary response is more likely to be emitted by the organism.

Eyes on Language Your Baby s First Steps Toward Learning to Speak Language What do we know? Your baby is born ready to learn language! His brain has special structures that enable him to learn about sounds,

Seeing, Thinking, and Doing in Infancy How Children Develop Chapter 5 Infant Development Perception Action Learning Cognition Motor Development Reflexes Motor Milestones Current Views of Motor Development

Questions and Answers for Parents There are simple, inexpensive tests available to detect hearing impairment in infants during the first days of life. In the past, most hearing deficits in children were

Program curriculum for graduate studies in Speech and Music Communication School of Computer Science and Communication, KTH (Translated version, November 2009) Common guidelines for graduate-level studies

I. DEFINITION "Specific learning disability" means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself

The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language Pronunciation in English March 2013 Volume 16, Number 4 Title Level Publisher Type of product Minimum Hardware Requirements Software Requirements

PURE TONE AUDIOMETRY Andrew P. McGrath, AuD Pure tone audiometry is the standard behavioral assessment of an individual s hearing. The results of pure tone audiometry are recorded on a chart or form called

144 The Pronunciation of the Aspirated Consonants P, T, and K in English by Native Speakers of Spanish and French Philip Suarez Florida International University, USA Abstract: This study examines whether

Collecting and analyzing data for understanding the development of triadic attention Kaya de Barbaro SIN Network Postdocin Deaklab + Machine perception Lab Social interaction is complex Social interaction

PART III: PARENT EDUCATION Parent education sessions need to be planned and should follow a similar sequence each time. The suggested sequence is listed here and is explained later in this article. Also,

How do we test the hearing of babies and children? An audiologist will select from a range of different tests to evaluate your child s hearing. The choice of test depends on the information that is needed

Learning To Talk Week 4 Overview of Chapter 7! The Power of Language! Keys to the World of Language! The Basic Domains of Language Acquisition! Explanations of Language Acquisition! Reconsidering the Keys

Technology in Music Therapy and Special Education What is Special Education? Disabilities are categorized into the following areas: o Autism, visual impairment, hearing impairment, deaf- blindness, multiple

Infant Development: The First Year of Life Your child's first few years are critical in the development of his or her temperament, learning style and pattern of growth. You are your child's first and most

The Thirteen Special Education Classifications Part 200 Regulations of the Commissioner of Education, Section 4401(1) Student With a Disability: A student as defined in section 4401(1), who has not attained

Welcome to the SAILS Backgrounder This information package was developed by Dr. Susan Rvachew to help speech-language pathologists decide when and how to use SAILS, in accordance with the principles of

Unit 5 This unit focuses on sequencing. These extension Unit Objectives activities give the children practice with sequencing beginning, middle, and end. As the learn to name family members and rooms children

It s All in the Brain! Presented by: Mari Hubig, M.Ed. 0-3 Outreach Coordinator Educational Resource Center on Deafness What is the Brain? The brain is a muscle In order to grow and flourish, the brain

Courses Description ELI 600 Second Language Acquisition 3 This course introduces the students to the major theories and issues in second language acquisition, as well as the theories and assumptions that

224 REGULATIONS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN AUDIOLOGY (MSc[Audiology]) (See also General Regulations) Any publication based on work approved for a higher degree should contain a reference to

College of Education COMMUNICATION DISORDERS AND SCIENCES (CDS) Advising Handout Career Paths for the CDS Major Speech Language Pathology Speech language pathologists work with individuals with communication

Review for Exam 2 1) When Roy first received a new toy, he played with it all the time. The longer he had it, the less he played with it. This change in Roy's behavior is an example of A) priming. B) habituation.

DR. JANET FRICK AND CURRENT PROJECTS... 1 WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT WORKING IN THE INFANT STUDY CENTER..2 WHAT WE EXPECT FROM YOU.3 WHY BECOME A RESEARCH ASSISTANT... 3 APPLICATION... 4 We are very excited about

Children learning English as an additional language (EAL) Many children in early years settings will have a home language other than English. Practitioners should value this linguistic diversity and provide

Teacher's Guide to Pronunciation in English - High Beginning+ Pronunciation in English - Intermediate+ User Management System Included for all schools at no additional cost Feedback from students After

SPEECH AND LANGUAGE CASE HISTORY FORM Date Person filling out this questionnaire Relationship to child PLEASE ATTACH A RECENT PHOTO OF YOUR CHILD HERE IDENTIFYING INFORMATION Name of child Nickname Date

Feeding Disorders and Failure to Thrive in infancy. The role of the pediatrician M Maldonado MD Feeding disorders and failure to thrive in infancy Not a rarity, frequency in community samples is around

1 Oralism and How it Affects the Development of the Deaf Child 2 Many Deaf individuals face a plethora of discrimination in a world in which they do not belong, a world which relies heavily on sound in

Normal and Abnormal Development in the Infant and Pre-School Child Steven Bachrach, M.D. Co-Director, Cerebral Palsy Program A.I. dupont Hospital for Children Development in the Infant and Child A newborn

Critical Review: In children with cerebral palsy and a diagnosis of dysarthria, what is the effectiveness of speech interventions on improving speech intelligibility? Sarah Rentz M.Cl.Sc (SLP) Candidate

Physical and Cognitive Cognitive Intro Psychology Georgia Tech Instructor: Dr. Bruce Walker Changes in behavior and structure from womb to tomb We focus on childhood because more is known about that stage

Child Psychology MODULE 1 MAJOR DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES 1 Home Learning College 2 Child Psychology Unit One The First Years of Life Aims The aim of this unit is to enable you to: distinguish between innate

African American English-Speaking Children's Comprehension of Past Tense: Evidence from a Grammaticality Judgment Task Abstract Children who are dialectal speakers, in particular those that speak African

Care Pathway for Rehabilitation Team (Following allocation of Cochlear Implant surgery date) Home information session (Carried out by a member of the CI team) Rehabilitationist allocated to family Cochlear

Journeys Through California s Early Start Developed by WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies in collaboration with the California Department of Education and the Department of Developmental Services

Soma s RPM Lesson Plan Volume 1 Lesson Plan for a beginner 4 to 6 years old with first exposure to RPM: (approx. 30 minutes) Aim: To teach the child what to choose and how to choose. To assess the movement

Uluslararası Sosyal Aratırmalar Dergisi The Journal of International Social Research Volume: 3 Issue: 14 Fall 2010 MODULARITY OF MIND Yasaman CHOUBSAZ* 1 Abstract When we are talking about language acquisition,

Critical Review: What effect does being in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) have on a child s speech and language development? Winnie Shum M.Cl.Sc (SLP) Candidate Western University: School of Communication

Modern foreign languages Programme of study for key stage 3 and attainment targets (This is an extract from The National Curriculum 2007) Crown copyright 2007 Qualifications and Curriculum Authority 2007

Human Cognition An important foundation for the design of interfaces is a basic theory of human cognition The information processing paradigm (in its most simple form). Human Information Processing The